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THE 




Annals of Iowa, 



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PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE 



STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 



lOW^^ CITY 



CTTJXiY, 1874- 




Davenport, Iowa: 

Day, Egbert, & Eidlar, Printers. 

1874. 




CONTENTS OF THE JULY NUMBER. 



Philosophy of the History of thk Louisiana 

Purchase, 161 

Amelia Bloomer, 1^*0 

Early Times in Iowa, 195 

Notes on the History of Pottawattamie County, - 219 

Fort Madis'on, 236 

Editorial Notes, - 240 



Annals of Iowa. 



Vol. XII. Iowa City, July, 1874. N'o. 3. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HISTORY OF THE LOUISIANA 
PUEOHASE. 



AN ADDRKSS DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OP 

IOWA, AT IOWA CITY, JUNE 29tH, 1874, ON THE OCCASION OF 

THEIR SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 



BY THE HON. HENRY CLAY DEAN. 



(GENTLEMEN of the Iowa State Hlstokical Soci- 
J ety : — Less thiin a half century has passed since 
Iowa was one grand landscape of flowers, interspersed 
with a mere selvage of forests, diversified with beautiful 
streams of water, occupied by roaming tribes of Indians, 
and the wild beasts from which they drew their suste- 
nance. To-day, Iowa is the granary of America, the 
very first in the rank of producers, growing a larger 
combined amount of the cereals than any other State in 
the Union, excepting only Illinois, which was admitted as 
a State in the Union, while Iowa was yet a compara- 
tively unexplored wilderness. 

History presents no parallel to the wonderful phy- 
sical development and growth of your State — a growth 
which is developing and a development still growing. 
Unique in its history which is the romance of a political 
21 



F35-1 

162 ANNALS OF lOAVA. [jULY, 

philosophy that must ultimately i^oveni the world, the 
marvelous growth of Iowm is hut the natural rc-ilex of her 
history. 

The discovery of America nuirked a new vvn m the 
history of the world's physical existence. But infinite 
in its range of moral and intellectual culture and progress 
was the result of civilization and Liherty, the fairest, 
purest and most exalted of all of the daughters of relig- 
ion. The right of })ro]>erty hy discovery was abandoned 
in the higher doctrine that "The earth is the Lords' and 
the fullness thereof, and they that dwell therein." Only 
the great events in which truth and justice have been 
the arbiters, are worthy of record or remembrance 
among nations or men. The combinations of circum- 
stances which gave to your State its high rank among 
civilized nations wears the air of romance whicli is at 
best but a feeble imitation of truth, for truth is stranger 
than fiction. The convulsions of the French govern- 
ment, our ancient and most faithful ally, gave to the 
Federal Union the Louisiana Territory. The great 
spirit of Jefferson, with the wisdom and foresight of the 
philosopher and statesman, sought the extension of the 
area of tree government, choosing rather to follow^ the 
spirit than the letter of the Constitution, to acquire half 
a continent dedicated to self-government. The French 
revolution was the occasion, the missionary spirit of re- 
publican government was the cause, which made Iowa 
the garden of America. In the inception of the French 
revolution, the chief iconoclasts scarcely dreamed of the 
compass, extent and magnitude of their work of de- 
struction; realizing still less of the magnificence of that 
superstructure of liberty, which failing in their own 
land, should be reared in the wilderness of an unex- 
plored territory, nominally held by France, really occu- 
pied in common by wild beasts and savages. Atheism, 
growing weary of the domination of churcli usurpation, 
unfitly enough, purporting to represent, govern and 
transmit the simple. Just and universal religion of Christ, 



1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 163 

foolishly made war upon God, because too cowardly to 
assail the wrongs of the Hierarchy ; ridiculed the authen- 
ticity and genuineness of Divine Revelation, which is the 
only guarantee of free government and the equal rights 
of man. This Atheism was the fountain from which the 
French revolution in all its stages drew its sustenance. 

That which was called the church was a strange com- 
pound of the superstition, idolatry and ferocity of the 
old Paganism, mingled with the visionary metaphysics 
of the Pagan philosophers, the ceremonious formalities 
and gorgeous temple worship of the Jews, with the un- 
naturally interwoven and grossly misappropriated doc- 
trine of Moses and the prophets, of Christ and the 
Apostles. This church was the mistress of Kings and 
Emperors, Oligarchs and Aristocrats, who invoked its 
authority to enslave the masses, who worshiped at its 
shrine, and yielded abject submission to its commands. 
Voltaire, though not the first to assail, was beyond all 
comparison the ablest of all the assailants of the author- 
ity of the church. His mode of attack was powerful and 
overwhelming. The object of his attack was a mistake, 
and therefore not enduring. Had he attacked the cor- 
ruptions of the church, the Bible and Christianity would 
have been his invincible allies, whose conquest would 
have been enduring and eternal. But Voltaire chose 
otherwise ; he attacked the Bible, ridiculed its teachings, 
scoffed at its authority, burlesqued in cynical ferocity its 
great author and His simple Apostles. The church was 
wounded in its vitals, but Christianity arose from the 
fire all the purer from its contact with the fiames. Fene- 
lon, Bourdaloe, Massilon, Saurin, Bossuet, yet live as 
the lights of the temple whose shekinah will burn in daz- 
zling glory long after the fire of the sun has been 
quenched by weary ages. But Voltaire did his hercu- 
lean task well. The corruptions of the church were 
held up to public scorn. 

Voltaire was the sovereign of French literature, the 
French Ben Johnson of the Drama; the Samuel Johnson 



164 ANNALS OF IOWA. [JOLY, 

ot'lior criticism, iniinitable in history, without comparison 
in versatility. His keen double-edged sword spared 
neither monarch nor bishop. The champion of neither 
doctrine, sentiments, or establishment, he made general 
war upon all existing things. The torch of his incendi- 
ary pen was applied to mansions, palaces, libraries, and 
museums; to religion, philosophy and history, indis- 
criminately. But in the train of the conflagration he 
left neither cottage nor tent in which the weary houseless 
traveler might find shelter from the storm, or rest to his 
limbs. Volney and Rousseau, each as torch bearers of 
the great chief, did their minor w^ork with alacrity and 
suavity, without his ferocity and without his power. 

Voltaire had been the companion of the German in- 
fidel King Frederick. The companion and at the same 
time his menial, he surrendered his own manhood for 
the sovereign patronage. The superior sagacity and 
powers of the German monarch gave to Voltaire audac- 
ity in his attack upon the French hierarchy. J3ut the 
French hierarchy was the corner stone of the French 
monarchy. The feudal system was its citadel. The 
church, the military and royalty, were the trinity of 
tyrants, who must stand or fall together. Under the 
ferocious attack of Voltaire a skepticism spread every- 
where through the French Empire. The people, w)io 
had no voice in the government, yet by nature born of 
God and ordained to self-government, combined in 
secret societies for self-improvement, self-government, 
and the protection of their families, and .the right to 
enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These 
societies spread, grew in nundiers, knowledge and power, 
until there was a government within the government 
stronger than the government itself. 

The profligacy of the French court, the corruptions 
of the church, the overbearing exactions of the feudal 
lords, growing with enormous power, enforced their 
mandate with an army, cruel and remorseless in the ex- 
ecution of the will of the court, and exhausting the re- 



1874.] THK LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 165 

sources of the industry of the country. Tlie lords tem- 
poral, and lords spiritual, were also lords of the soil, 
but were exempt from taxation. The dangerous experi- 
ment of freeing any class of property or of men from 
taxation was fully tested in France. The universal skep- 
ticism of Voltaire was followed by the universal license 
of Rousseau, which infused into the mind of the French 
people a strange contempt for personal reponsibility to 
law. 

The French people were divided into two most dan- 
gerous and unreasonable parties : the royal party, who 
were the advocates of government without liberty, upon 
the one hand ; the revolutionary party, who declared for 
liberty without restraint or government, upon the other 
hand. The coniiict of authority was felt in every part 
of the Empire. The State's General was assembled to 
effect a compromise, and to secure to the people b}' law 
what they declared their rights by nature. The differ- 
ences were too great to be settled amicably. Tiie king 
claimed absolute power to rule by authority of God. 
The people asserted the right to self-government by 
nature, which is but the empire of God. The contest 
was fully inaugurated ; propositions for settlement only 
lengthened the time, but could not change the result : 
only an appeal to the God of battles could settle a con- 
flict in which nature and God were respectively invoked 
as authority. Long continued power grasped by the 
great hands of strength is soon transferred to the 
hands of weak men who are born in, buy or bribe 
their way to place and power. This is ever so in gov- 
ernments. Immediately after our own revolution, 
Washington complained of the exceeding mediocre of 
Congress as compared with the giants who led the van 
of the great struggle. The great men of the second 
period of the American government did not appear until 
the second war with Great Britain developed Claj^, 
Webster and Calhoun. The tliird great American con- 
flict developed Douglass, Lincoln, Toombs, Alexander 



166 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY. 

and Thuddcii.s Stevens, Seward, Chase and Snmner, with 
scHtterod great names here and there ; Randolph, Pinck- 
ney and Black. In times like these mere office holding 
dwarfs a great part of our public men, and office seek- 
ing dwarfs or corrupts the remainder ; so it was in the 
revolution, so will it ever be. 

With the elements of conflict all in subdued commo- 
tion, there was no great loader in France to crystalize 
the opposition, nor was one demanded until the aggres- 
sion of Louis drove the ruined [leople together ; then 
the leader came forth — the great Mirabeau, son of Vic- 
tor de Mirabeau. By lineage eccentric, extravagant and 
versatile, by birth deformed, the snuill-pox made him 
even more liideous in his childhood. Mirabeau had been 
driven from home, made miserable by the separation of his 
parents, to schooL From school he was arrested under 
sealed lettres de cachet by the application of his unnatural 
father. His life for years was spent under the arbitrary 
arrests of the government, by the connivance of his 
father, who was fond of calling himself " the friend of 
man." Mirabeau was the natural ofi'spring of oppres- 
sion. The causes of the revolution were the aggrega- 
tion of his own wrongs, and his attack upon the govern- 
ment was the simple defense of his own rights. The 
people had been driven raad by oppression ; their prop- 
erty had been squandered upon the voluptuousness, 
vices and cruelty of kings. Their children had been 
fed to armies as lambs of the flock are fed to ravenous 
wolves, to gratify revenge and minister to ambition. 
The church was the jackal of kings and armies to hunt 
down their prey. Kndurancc had wasted its powers. 
Human nature could bear uj) no longer against the com- 
binations of the lust of power, the tyranny of kings, the 
oppression of the nobility, the hypoerisy of the church 
and the despotism of armies. 

The condition of France was only different from that 
of an oriental despotism, as a reality is different tVoni a 
sham which conceals a wrong inflicted only different 



1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 167 

in pretense. France had no real representation. Her 
elections were controlled by violence and fraud. There 
was no trial by jury, nor any fair administration of jus- 
tice. Leitres de cachet destroyed the security of the 
liberty of every person, without reo'ard to age or sex. 

The old feudal laws ot remorseless execution still held 
the tenantry as slaves, " The predial serfs of Cham- 
pagne were counted with the cattle on the estates." The 
nobility and clergy were exempt from taxation. Upon 
the farmers and laborers, with the untitled people, were 
laid all the burdens of church and state. General suffer- 
ing prevailed ; the church, the court, and the armies 
absorbed the money. Taxes were the only share had by 
the people in the government. The government ought 
to have been overthrown an age before. But to a people 
long inured to oppression, it required education to make 
them free. They first lose their liberty, and endure 
until custom and endurance destroy their love of liberty, 
then generations follow who have lost even the knowl- 
edge of liberty. 

Mirabeau came opportunely. He denounced the king, 
and was therefore called a rebel. He hurled anathemas 
at the corruptions of the church, and demanded the con- 
fiscations of vast estates, wrested from the people, and 
was therefore denounced as an infidel and repudiator of 
vested rights. When the king threatened the personal 
safety of the members of the Convention, Mirabeau 
moved that the violation of the personal safety of au}^ of 
the members of that body should be accounted worthy 
of death, and met the throne at the threshold of its 
power to defy it, and but for the graceful submission of 
the king, Mirabeau would have been an outlaw. And 
so it was and is, and ever shall be, that men long treated 
as outlaws become outlaws. Why should it be other- 
wise? Men owe no allegiance to government which offers 
them no protection. Such is the nature of the contract. 
Our allegiance is thus founded. " We love God Uecause 
he first loved us," 



16H ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, 

Tlie magazine, dry and well tilled with powder, was care- 
fully jilaced benoath the French throne. Mirabcau went 
forth with tlie torch and api)lied it. The explosion was 
that of a volcano heaving uj) its burning lava only to ex- 
plodeagain andagaiuand again, until throne, government, 
church, state and liberty were alike enveloped in its flames. 
The ehxpu'uce of Mirabcau, strange compound of the di- 
vine and internal, struck down the feudal system. The 
divine right of kings and special privileges of the nobil- 
ity fell at the same blow. At the command of his voice 
feudal parchments were strewed over the House of the 
General Convention by feudal lords, who sought security 
for their lives in the surrender of the estates upon which 
servants were kept poor and starving. Lords surren- 
dered their immemorial privileges. The church gladly 
gave up its property and relinquished her titles in con- 
sideration for their safety. The king surrendered his 
prerogatives, and the people secured their natural right 
to religious liberty. All this without the shedding of 
blood. What Mirabeau would have done with life pro- 
longed, death has left a mystery. The loss of Mirabeau, 
the orator of the Christian era, gave assurance to the 
nobility, inspired the king with fresh courage, and left 
the peojtle without a leader given to command. 

After Mirabeau came Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, 
the triune fiends of the revolution. The tirst, of coarse 
eloipience, courage, and cruelty, hurried on by his own 
passions to the guillotine, already clotted with the blood of 
his victims, innocent and guilty ; old men and beautiful 
maidens, alike the victims of his sanguinary cruelty. 
Marat, the empyric, who readily changed his vocation of 
munler by medicines, to murder by law ; a wild beast let 
loose upon society, clothed with official power, came to 
his end by the well direct'^d dagger of Charlotte Corday. 

Robespierre, who had led Louis to the block; the 
learned idiot, the hypocritical monster, who paraded his 
condescending tliscovery that God has some limiteil share 
in the i^overnmcnts of men, carried on this murderous 



1874,] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 169 

crusade against law, order, religious liberty, and human 
rights, until the retributive justice of God arrested his 
murderous career, and mingled his base, wicked blood 
with that of the tens of thousands who had perished by his 
murderous hand. The Convention, which first assembled 
to assure to the people their natural rights and to secure 
liberty, was now an assembly of the representative assas- 
sins of Europe, establishing law for the ratification of 
murder, rapine and robbery. 

Then came Bonaparte to disperse the Convention. He 
upon whom eulogies and denunciation, poetry and rhet- 
oric, criticism and essays, the decrees of sovereign coun- 
cils, the anathemas of churches, and combination of 
armies, were show«jred with indiscrimination, came to 
give relief to the people from the horrors they had visi- 
ted upon themselves. A foreigner, who had cultivated 
the ambition and love of liberty of his Roman ancestry ; 
a stranger, wandering from the military schools of France 
in shabby clothing, hungry and careworn, he had worked 
his way into the army, from the army to victory. He 
won his first laurels in the home of his fathers ; he over- 
ran Italy with the soldiers who had been holding France 
in terror for a full decade, and utilized in conquest the 
elements which had made Paris hideous with anarchy. 
From Italy to Africa his sunburnt soldiers bore the col- 
ors of the land of Charlemagne to the tomb of the Pha- 
raohs, and were inspired with the sublime suggestion of 
their leader that forty centuries looked down from the 
summits of the pyramids to witness their prowess and 
approve their valor. 

From Egypt, Napoleon returned to France, first a sol- 
dier of fortune, then first consul holding the destiny of 
France in his grasp, with the thrones and dynasties of 
Europe trembling at his tread. Napoleon was at heart 
a friend to civil and religious liberty. So had he been 
reared. Great, broad, deep, and profound, he instinct- 
ively despised the narrow views and absurd theorieni o 
the monarchists claiming authority of God to govern the 
22 



170 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, 

people, and protbumlly condemned the mysterious mum- 
niericH and sensek'S^ trapi)ino:s of tlie c-hurcli and the 
eourt. Like Mirabeau and Jettersou, Napoleon was a 
sloven who wonld in undressing toss his hat in one cor- 
ner of the room and his boots in another. To such a 
man, always expressing Ids contempt for fops and dan- 
dies, the popinjays who hang around courts would have 
no attractions. 

Najioloon feared for the destiny of the French people. 
Their education had made the monarch}- and hierarchy 
part of tlieir existence. The well doing people could 
see no safety outside of the monarchy. The religious 
people could hope for salvation only through the estab- 
lishment of the church. Dark and gloomy as were the 
storms passing over the land, far above the storm, im- 
mortality and eternal life glowed through the black 
bosom of the clouds, and the hopes of their children 
and the homes of their fathers shone out clear as the 
sunlight and beautiful as perpetual spring, beckoning 
them upward and onward to realms of light. 

The kingdom of France was no longer. The republic 
of France was reeliiig to and fro like a drunken man. 
All Europe dreaded the revolutionary heresies of the Na- 
tional A8seml)ly far niore than they dreaded the horrible 
massacres of the revolution ; for all despotism are tem- 
ples reared upon human slavery and cemented with 
blood, whose richest music are the groans, sighs and 
agonies of oppression and its consequent suti'ering. Na- 
poleon trembled for the French colonies, French pos- 
sessions, and French dependencies, especially those of 
America. The Caiuidas in the north had been wrested 
from France by England with the aid of rhe colonics. 

San Domingo had never added to eithe. the wealth or 
the glory of the French })eople, w'ho of all civilized peo- 
ple are the least cosmopolitan in their habits. Their 
devotion is their mountains, valleys, sea home of France. 
France had never reproduced her own greatness in 
America, as the kingdom af Great Britain has done in 



1874.] THE L0UI8IANA PUKCHASE. 171 

her colonies. Bonaparte dreaded the necessity of the 
transportation of armies to the western shores of the 
Atlantic. His experience in Egypt had been unfavor- 
able to sea fighting, and Bonaparte was eminently a hero 
of land rather than sea forces. The necessity of the 
defence of the great Missi3sppi country was exceedingly 
probable, with the Canadas iu the north. Her posses- 
sions in the West India Islands would afford the British 
a stronghold in the south. The relations of France to 
Spain were equally delicate. Even then there was a 
contemplated alliance between Great Britain and Spain 
against the French, and Spain held Mexico, with all of 
Spanish America, Cuba, and Florida. The hope of re- 
gaining the colonies had not yet lost its hold upon British 
ambition. To hold the Louisiana Territory in the con- 
flicts of the Napoleonic wars, then fully planned in the 
great ambition of the first Consul, was deemed problem- 
atic. The French people knew of the Mississippi coun- 
try not more than the recent generation know of the 
unexplored mountains of the moon. The very recollec- 
tion of the Mississippi was naturally enough associated 
with John Law's Mississippi bubble, which had burst in 
ruin over the heads of the French people but little more 
than half a century before. The Mexicans, Americans, 
Spaniards, British or French had no conception of the 
extent, wealth and resources of this wonderful country. 
But Napoleon finally concluded to strip for the contest 
and conquest of the most enlightened continent of the 
globe, and throw ofi:' every weight, and placed in market 
a territory of greater extent and magnificence than all 
the coveted kingdoms of Europe, distributed among his 
kindreds. 

No people ever enjoyed religious liberty, who did not 
first secure civil lib^^rty, to protect it. The rights of 
conscience, sacred in themselves, are ripened by • ulture, 
and naturally seek their own defence. He who hath not 
a cultivated conscience, which comes of a cultivated 
mind, will care little for tlie rights of conscience. 



172 ANNALS OF IOWA. [.JULY, 

The colonization of North America was the re-people- 
ing of another Eden with societies well lettererl and 
independent in their modes of thought, which l^egat 
a keen conscienciousness — convictions for which their 
fathers sutfered death in Europe, and in defence of which 
they imperiled their lives upon the altar of liberty, and 
poured out their blood like water spilled upon the 
ground. The American colonies were penal prisons for 
certain criminals of the parent govenmieut in Europe. 
But the crimes for which they were transported were 
those bold, divine vii'tues of too pure and of too rich 
and rank a growth to flourish on the soil of a despotism, 
under the shadow of thrones. 

The crime of " worshipping God according to the dic- 
tates of their conscience ;" the crime of " obeying God 
rather than man;" the crime of rejecting the doctrine 
of " the divine right of kings ;" the crime of despising 
" base submission to unjust laws ;" the crime of resist- 
ing the slavish doctrine of passive obedience;" the crime 
of refusing to join in throne worship — king worship — 
man worship or hero worship. 

Breasting the billows of the ocean and keeping time 
to the music of its storms, with their songs of liberty 
and religion, these brave people, banished by govern- 
ment, or exiling themselves to the protection of heaven, 
under the guaranty of their natural rights, came to peo- 
ple and cultivate a continent. They contemplated with 
faith, patience, and fortitude, the ultimate establishment 
of an enlightened republican government ; a special 
corporation under the government of nature and of God, 
under the supreme law of our being, that all men are 
born free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights. 

They adopted these maxims, clear as the sun, beauti- 
ful as the firmament, and enduring as the Deity ; an 
essential element of the manhood of man ; an immor- 
tality which shall glow with splendor long after the tire 
of the sun has died out, and " the elements have melted 
with fervent heat." " All the just powers of govern- 



1874.] TPIE LOUISIANA PUKCHASE. 173 

nieiit are derived from the consent of governed." 
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." "Equal 
and exact justice to all men and especial privileges to 
none." "All power is inherent in the people." 

These people were scattered over the ocean frontier of a 
continent, surrounded by savages, attacked at their labor 
by wild beasts, and treading through a wilderness of 
venomous serpents, in an atmosphere poisoned with 
malaria, the rich outgrowth of a virgin soil which had 
never been disturbed by the plow. 

With what heroism these bold, brave men cast their 
eyes backward through a dense wilderness of thrones, 
prisons, armies, spies, stakes, and gibbets, which had puri- 
iied liberty, and trained heroes, martyrs, and philoso- 
phers to educate and lead mankind to this grandest, ulti- 
mate, glorious destiny ! The graves of their persecuted 
aiicestry in foreign lands became sacred as memorials of 
duty, and were remembered as vestibules through which 
they traveled darkly into the temple of light. Their 
wild hamlets were schools where the children were taught 
that all men of right ought to be, and of a moral neces- 
sity would ultimately be, free and govern themselves. 

America was, from its discovery, the land of prison- 
ers. Christopher Columbus threw the light of the world 
upon a new continent only to expiate his crime of dis- 
covery in a loathsome prison. William Penn came with 
his friendly, peaceful followers to secure his release from 
imprisonment for his devotion to principles inimical to 
tyrants — the son of an admiral, yet the follower of Christ, 
and the teacher of brotherly love, came to America to 
teach savages, by example, " Peace on earth, and good 
will to men." A colony reared upon such a foundation 
and administering the government upon such principles, 
educated her people to love liberty, enjoy liberty, and 
cultivate its knowledge, and were schooled to the hardy 
virtues of freedom which were interwoven in the subtle 
web of society. 

Republican government grew naturally among such a 



174 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, 

people, who were m»coiisciously freeing their limbs from 
the fetters never to be enslaved again. Driven by pro- 
scription from the cruelties of Old England, the first 
settlers of New England were devoted to religion, where 
they fled to enjoy it; and however the narrow-minded 
exclusiveness of the religious bigotry from which they 
sufl:ered tailed to teach them toleration to others, yet 
the ancestry who gave to the world Franklin, the 
Adamses, Samuel and John Hancock, Warren, the Ed- 
wardses, Websters, and Fisher Ames, were the nucleus 
of a self-government which inured immensely to the ulti- 
mate independence of the colonies. 

The llugenots, driven in exile through Europe, found 
a resting place in South Carolina, and founded the south- 
ern outposts of liberty in the colonies. Through persecu- 
tion and pain, torture and privation, these cultivated Chris- 
tian people were driven over every country in Europe in 
search of safety, until the winds of the ocean drove them 
to the Carolinas. Tempest-tossed in the revolutions of 
Europe, they found an asylum beyond the reach of the 
minions of courts, the inquisitors of the church, and the 
spies of the army, but never abated their zeal for liberty. 

.hen came the Dutch to New Holland. A brave peo- 
ple, inured to the hardships and risks of the ocean, who 
had opened tlieir dykes and invited the waters to take 
possession of their country, rather than to surrender it 
to invading t^^rants. In imitation of their northern colo- 
nial brethren, they commenced the work of crystalizing 
civilization, education, enterprise, and improvement, 
preparing the way for the ultimate struggle of the great 
national birth. In the very heart of the country Lord 
Baltimore came to people Maryland. Weary of Euro- 
pean persecutions, of the adulterous union of cliurch 
and state, the conflicts to perpetuate or change dynasties 
and personal governments, created in the interest of 
families and combinations to butcher the people in 
armies, and rob them by taxation, to fci-d llie extrava- 
gance and support the voluptuousness of nobilities and 



1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 175 

courts, Lord Baltimore was the founder of the first of 
all the colonies who declared the divine right of the 
liberty of conscience to all men. With the spirit of 
their country free as the ocean and bold as the winds 
they added to the gathering army of freedom, forming 
the cordon of liberty along the Atlantic coast. 

Virginia was settled by the hardy yeomanry of Eng- 
land, who carried with them the memories of the right 
of trial by jury, and the rights of constitutional liberty, 
which for ages had made Great Britain the citadel of 
just government in Europe, the only organized power on 
earth which respected the rights of a fair and impartial 
trial by the peers of the accused. Very early the spirit 
of free thought gained possession of the people, and a 
jealousy of colonial privileges was succeeded by the dec- 
laration of natural rights, which assumed the right of 
self-government. The warlike spirit of this " great and 
unterrified colony," which Lord Cornwallis was wont to 
call Virginia, produced Washington, a military hero, the 
most eminent for his virtue in the annals of mankind. 
The encroachments of the church had precipitated a con- 
flict between the tithe gatherer and the worshipper at 
the shrine of a drunken priesthood and fox-hunting 
bishops. Patrick Henry, born of the occasion, sprang 
into the contest and defended the people against the 
aggressions of the parsons. 

The revolutionary war was the occasion but not the 
cause of the liberty of the American people. The cause 
was the education of the people. The germ of liberty 
had been transplanted to a virgin soil, and grew with its 
natural growth just as despotism had grown rankly 
under the fostering care of thrones, hierarchies, and 
armies. A crystalized government, now under the ad- 
ministration of Jefferson, just after the reflex of Amer- 
ican independence and liberty had thrown its glittering 
shadow across the ocean, drove terror into the hearts of 
old despotisms enthroned. The French soldiers who 
served under La Fayette, enamored of American liberty, 



176 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, 

discoursed freely of the rights of man. Even under 
Bonaparte the French army, then the grandest that ever 
nuircljcd under martial orders, dreamed themselves the 
army of the repuhlic of France. At this juncture of 
affairs there were two republics. The one a glorious 
organized revival of the rights of man, the other the 
mere shadow of liberty, an ignusfatuus, that led a great 
army through the jaws of death in enthusiastic man- 
worship, under the delusion that this was the road to 
freedom. 

The republican enterprise of Mr. Jefferson met the 
imperial tactics of Napoleon, and tempted his ambition 
with money, whilst in fear that the interposition of 
England and Spain might wrest the prize from his hand. 
Jefferson secured the wealth of a continent from a con- 
querer who had made the foundations of the dynasteis of 
ages tremble at his approach, w^ho was casting the dice 
of battle for thrones, crowns and sceptres, to be distrib- 
uted among his kinsmen. 

Such was the ignorance of the French respecting the 
magnitude of this great country, that Guizot, long after 
its acquisition by the United States, believed it possible 
for Europe to establish a balance of power in North 
America. Many years alter the transfer of the Louisi- 
ana terrritory a memorial was presented to the king of 
Prussia, assuring the world that the growth of American 
republicanism could be readily checked by a European 
alliance with the powerful tribe of Cherokee Indians, 
who would prevent the extension of our lines of civiliz- 
ation. 

Napoleon was tracing his conquests in lines of blood 
through the centuries of Roman grandeur, glory and 
heroisui, to give to his family the thrones of the Caesars ; 
turning away to the north he dreamed of dominion in 
the home of the Scythian. Spain, and Belgium, and 
Naples were but as country seats in which to quarter his 
kinsmen. In the madness of his delirium, he surren- 
dered to the republican president, for less than one- 



1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 177 

fourth of the private fortune of our most wealthy Amer- 
ican citizen, the most magnificent land ever transmitted 
by inheritance orbought with money. 

The Mississippi river, that reaches out her hands and 
gathers up the waters of the lakes, holds up the snow of 
the mountains to the sun until rivers, streams and rivu- 
lets gather from the extremities of a magnificent land, 
the fountains of a vast inland sea streaming forth from 
the earth and watered by the clouds of a continent, with 
mountains filled with the richest minerals, coal to propel 
the machinery of the world, and gold to conduct its 
commerce; iron, lead and copper; forests of timber, 
with a soil as rich as the valley of the Nile, which needs 
not its irrigation ; embracing a climate of every varied 
temperature, a bracing atmosphere in the north, which 
creates nerves of steel, to revel in perpetual snows; 
through wheat fields and corn fields, until the hemp 
blooms with the tobacco plant, and the cotton opens its 
pulps beneath the shade of the orange grove, and the 
rice and sugar plantations are ripening in the realms of 
perpetual summer ; the apple and cranberry, with the 
hardy fruits at one end of the great line of railroads, 
the almond and tropical fruits at the other. This great 
river, which gathers its streams from the mountain re- 
cesses of every part of the land, is bound in closer bonds 
by railroads, which drive their chariots of fire through 
every avenue of commerce and trade, and will make us 
the richest self-government, the freest of all cultivated 
people. 

The grand system of valleys, of which the Mississippi 
is the immense garden, walled by the Alleghanies on 
the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west, bounded 
by lakes and gulfs, and environed by oceans, with the 
great pasture fields of the plains, and cattle ranches of 
Texas, must ultimately feed Europe and dictate laws to 
the United States — dictate laws in the broad, deep 
spirit of a land of such physical grandeur. This land 
of ours was the first fruits of the reactionary influence 
23 



178 ANNALS OF IOWA. [JULT, 

of our revolutionary war. This was the tirst foot of 
land ever purchased or peacefully acquired from a sov- 
ereign civilized power in the history of the human fam- 
ily for the purpose of dedication to constitutional gov- 
ernment, and it was so guarantied in the treaty which 
conferred it. 

This triumph of diplomacy over a government which 
was proud of the astuteness of its Talleyrand, would 
have secured immortality for the memory of any other 
statesman. But Jeftersou had made himself immortal. 
The Declaration of Independence will live as long as the 
English language and assist to preserve it. 

The administration of justice without oppression had 
attracted the friends of freedom of every government 
on earth to Jefferson, the chief magistrate. The act of 
religious toleration, written by the pen of Mr. Jefterson, 
and incorporated in the laws of Virginia, would have 
crowned with immortality the life and memory of any 
statesman of antiquity. Neither so elaborate as Demos- 
thenes' speech on the crown, nor made with such state- 
liness as Webster's plea for the American Union, nor so 
magnificent as the great oration of Herod to the Jews to 
lay down their arms against the Romans, it was greater 
than any or all of them combined. This act was the 
golden key that unlocked the door of the State to relig- 
ious liberty, and at the same time the bar of steel that 
closed the gate of the church to religious persecution. 

Between Napoleon and Jefferson was the most re 
markable contrast, never better drawn by human pen 
than by the following contrast, written by Mr. Jefferson 
in a letter to a cardinal at Rome, February 14, 1816 : 

* * * " Your letter to the archbishop, being from 
Rome, and so late in September, makes me hope that all 
is well ; and thanks be to God, the tiger who reveled so 
long in the blood and spoils of Europe, is at length, like 
another Prometheus, chained to his rock, whore the 
vulture of remorse for his crimes will be preying on his 
vitals, and in like manner without consuming them. 



1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 179 

Having been, like him, entrusted with the happiness of 
my country, I feel the blessing of resembling him in no 
other point. I have not caused the death of five or ten 
millions of human beings, the devastation of other 
countries, the depopulation of my own, the exhaustion 
of all its resources, the destruction of its liberties, nor 
its foreign subjugation. 

" All this has been done to render more illustrious 
the atrocities perpetrated for illustrating himself and his 
family with plundered diadems and sceptres. On the 
contrary, I have the consolation to reflect, that during 
the period of my administration not a drop of the blood 
of a single fellow-citizen was shed by the sword of the 
law or war, and after cherishing for eight years their 
peace and prosperity I laid down their trust of my own 
accord, and in the midst of their blessings and impor- 
tunities to continue it. 

" Thomas Jefferson. " 

Such was the philosophy of the history of the acquisi- 
tion of the mere territory upon which we have built the 
great State of Iowa. 

Such was the character of our ancestry, to whose long 
continued culture of justice and liberty we are indebted 
for a country scarcely less to be coveted than the garden 
of our first parents. A government perfect in every 
thing except those infirmities of administration by mere 
men. But how like the inferior animals are we in our 
notions of justice and right. Each devours the other 
inferior to himself. Our treaty with France gave us the 
naked right of discovery purchased, the right of home 
and possession the Indians had enjoyed for ages. 

For full three centuries the encroachments of the 
white man upon the Indian had been aggressive and 
augured of the extinction of the red race, leaving only 
here and there a remnant of the admixture with the 
superior race, to live in romance and song, of the Poca- 
hontas tribe of Powhattan ; or in the reigning of John 
Ross, of the Cherokees. 



180 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, 

Valley after valley was yielded to tLe cupidity and 
growth of the Caucassiaii race, who first begged a place 
to pitch his tent, as a refuge from persecution, then beg- 
ged a little ground to till and cultivate, to feed his chil- 
dren ; then begged a little more for his persecuted 
brethren, who were flying from persecution under the 
dominion of kings and hierarchies. Then wanted a little 
more for the church wliicli brought Christ and his 
precious doctrines, with salvation ofl:ered freely as the 
bul)bling waters that ran down from the mountains, 
pure as tlie snows that melted and gushed down from 
the moi ntain side. Then wanted more on which to 
build their churches; then wanted more to establish a 
government, to rule the churches and the people; then 
wanted more, to tax and pay tithes and stipends to give 
to the church a more ce. tain support ; then wanted 
more to keep an army to enforce the gospel of peace, 
with a few soldiers, ever ready to cut the throats of men 
not willing to believe or ready to obey the peaceful doc- 
trines of the gospel. In this small way did our honest 
fathers get their first fast foothold on the continent of 
the aborigines. 

But governments grow, power increases and becomes 
arbitrary; this was Archimedes' immovable fulcrum on 
which to place his lever to move the world. The In- 
dians yielded ; King Phillip gave way to the encroach- 
ments of the New England English ; Powhattan yielded 
to the encroachments of the Virginia English. The 
Shenandoah, the most beautiful, romantic and fruitful 
of all the eastern valleys, was surrendered by the In- 
dian tribes without i> battle or a massacre. That beauti- 
ful land surrouuded by mountain palisades, and over- 
hung by vast and wildly clustered villages of rocks, 
became the peacefully acquired possession of the Cau- 
cassian intruder, who begged an entrance into the home 
of the Indian and then robbed the Indian of what he 
could not get as a successful mendicant for the begging. 
Moving westward in a solid and aggressive column upon 



3874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 181 

the rights and homes of the red man, he approaches the 
sources of the Monougahela. Here is the grandest 
mountain plateau in all America ; where, standing, 
you can cast a stone into the springs that gather the 
lirst waters that sweep away through the mountains of 
the southeast into the Potomac — which divided the free 
from the slave States — and swept through its rich 
valleys to the ocean ; turning to the left, another stone 
could be cast into the waters of the Monongahela, which 
swiftly gathered the waters which drained the western 
slope of the Alleghanies ; turning again to the setting 
sun, a stone could be cast into the waters of the Kena- 
hawa and New rivers, which are the grand natural 
canals which concentrate the waters of the southwest 
into the Ohio ; turning to the south, springs that burst 
forth as fountains swept in cascades to the James river, 
and mingled the cool mountain waters with the ocean. 
From this beautiful plateau, by a gentle descent, the 
traveller soon reaches the Mingo Flats, out of which 
bursts the everlasting fountains of the Tygart Valley. 
This wild sublime scenery of the mountains — not ex- 
celled by anything drawn by the hand of romance — 
w^alled in by the last grand range of the Alleghanies, 
hundreds of feet above the level of the placid stream 
which flows in rippling floods beneath the mountain, 
then extends lor nearly fifty miles, cultivated by a gen- 
erous people. On the east, again walled by the great 
Cheat Mountain, on the very height of the mountain, at 
nearly two thousand feet above the level of the Tygart 
Valley, the dark and treacherous Cheat river pours its 
mountain floods over precipices, and through ledges for 
miles, then sinks, leaving only sun-smote rocks to mark 
the natural pathway of the ancient river; after subter- 
ranean passages for many miles, like a flood, it bursts 
forth again to pursue its tortuous course over precipice 
and ledge. This rude, beautiful, wild and romantic 
valley was the birth place of Logan, the Mingo chief, 
whose plaintive appeal upon the murder of his family 



182 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, 

will live side by side with the oration of Judah to 
Joseph for the release of Benjamin, and outlive all of 
the studied art of eloquence. 

From the Monongahela to the Muskingum, from the 
Muskingum to the Sciota, from the Sciota to the Miami, 
and finally to the Wabash, were the tribes driven, to 
make room for the white man, who wanted only a little 
more land to extend his civilization. 

Tecumseh and his wicked brother, the Prophet — it is 
well to call him wicked, because he was not a Caucassian 
— was not our champion — fought against us — made 
the last bold stand that looked like national war to 
resist the encroachments of civilization upon the natural 
rights of the Indian. The natural heroism of Tecumseh, 
united to the carefully planned fanaticism of the Prophet, 
combined with the British in an organized war, was a 
systematic resistance, such as had never before been 
made by the Indians since the settlement of the north- 
ern portion of the continent. 

The prophet was another Mahomet, using only the 
power at his command upon the superstitious nature of 
his people, another Joe Smith, improvising the tradi- 
tions of his tribes, another Miller, arousing the primitive 
nations to prepare for the millennium of his race, now 
at hand. The prophet was a bloody, vindictive dreamer. 
Tecumseh dreamed not ; he had all of the ability of 
King Philip, all of the sublime independence of Logan, 
all of the personal bravery of Cornstalk ; he was more 
than the superior of any Indian chieftan who had lived 
before him ; he was to the Indians whom he commanded 
what Hannibal was to the Carthagenians, what Cfesar was 
to the Romans, what Bonaparte was to the French, what 
Cromwell was to the English ; he failed only because he 
was the greatest of an inferior race, struggling against 
the superior. No mere human, however, gains a victory 
over nature. Defeat brought to life its worst vices — 
drunkenness, idleness, degradation. After the defeat of 
Tecumseh the enterprise and its first born child — ag- 



1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 183 

gression of the white man — brought its power into im- 
mediate contact with the Indian. 

Then came Blackhawk, the last of the Shawnees, who 
had fought side by side with Tecumseh, whose people 
had been robbed of their lands by the cupidity of the 
white man and the treachery of the red man. 'No longer 
a proud people, with the history of their warriors pre- 
served in the wampum belt and repeated on the battle- 
field, Blackhawk, parti}' in grief for the lost glory of his 
race, now melting away " like a snow flake on the river," 
and partly in desperation, organized an Indian army to 
prevent the occupation of their lands on the rich and 
picturesque Rock river valley. Believing that a contest 
here Avould — at least for a generation — postpone the 
settlement of the whites west of the Mississippi valley, 
Blackhawk made his war determined and vigorous, but 
not with the usual savage cruelty known and practiced 
by the earlier tribes. But Blackhawk was overcome. 
The heroic frontier warrior, Henry Dodge, whose family 
had suffered from frontier cruelty, who had heard in the 
cradle the war-whoop of the Indians, in after years had 
wrested the tomahawk from their stoutest braves, de- 
feated Blackhawk. So must it ever be, the inferior 
yielding to the superior race. 

Keokuk, Wapello, Appanoose, Kish-ke-kosh, Powe- 
sheik, with the long list of chiefs, those who were hered 
itary, and those who received their position from their 
tribes, were simply so many children of nature, who 
grew up with the rosin-weed, and had wolf dogs and 
ponies for their companions, hunted the buffalo, deer, 
elk, with the other wild game, and the wild fruits, died 
and left behind a progeny to perish like the Wild flowers, 
with nothing to perpetuate their remembrance among 
nations, leaving their memories among their tribes as 
names in a dreamy vocabulary' upon which to ground a 
tradition or amplify an old legend. Nature is itself de- 
structive, and produces only to destroy, and measures its 
powers to produce by its capacity to destroy. To this 



184 ANNALS OF IOWA. [JULY 

law man is no exception to tlic universal rule. The fisL 
eats the worm; the snake eats the fish ; the swine eats 
the snake ; man eats the swine. Men destroy each other 
until the first victim, the worm, eats the man, and finally 
the worm imitates the example of the men and devour 
each other. In this fearful circle of destruction nature 
produces, destroys, reproduces, and again destroys her- 
self. 

American history has no more mournful page than 
that of the gradual disappearance of the Indians, the firet 
proprietors of the soil. The history of the disappearance 
of the Indian in civilized America is unique, uniform, 
sorrowful, and natural. The land was possessed by the 
Indian; the buffalo, elk, and deer were his herds, par- 
taking of his nature, and participating in his nomadic 
habits. The bear, panther, and \volf prowled around his 
wigwam until the Indian made friends with the wolf, 
and imparted to him a domestication wonderfully like 
his own. The pony, wild as the Indian, served him well 
in the chase. The wild apple, plum, and grape, with 
those other fruits thai disappear upon the approach of 
the plow and other implements of culture, afforded to 
the Indian his pleasant summer sweets and acids; the 
wild man, the wild beast, the wild fruits lived and flour- 
ished together. But the white man came, and before 
him the enchanting dream of perpetual dominion fled 
as a vision forever. The buffalo heard the strange voico 
of the white man, and moved his herds as an army stam 
peding from the enemy. The Indian saw the retreating 
herd of buffalo, and mounted upon his pony — the rea- 
son was natural — the Indian's food and raiment was in 
the buftalo and kindred beasts. The wolf-dog followed 
the Indian, for he lived upon the oft'al of the chase. 
Then came the change. The white man, close upon the 
heels of the Indian, commenced his^ work of improve- 
ment and culture. Everything changc<l. There was a 
change in agriculture : the rosin-weed gave way to the 
corn-field ; the natural grasses were choked t ' . tim- 



1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 185 

othy, clover, and blue-grass. There was a change in 
horticulture : the crab apple yielded to the rambo and 
pippin ; the wild plum was cut away to give place to the 
green gauge and damson ; the wild sour grape, that 
clambered to the heights of great trees, or grew in 
swamps, was supplanted with the Catawba and Concord. 
There was a change in the animal domestics : the Dur- 
ham, Devon, and Alderney took the place of the buifalo ; 
the flocks of Merino sheep supplanted the wandering 
herds of deer ; the Morgan and Connestoga in the stalls 
supplanted the mustangs in the corral ; the shephecd 
and St. Bernard stood as guards to the house and herds, 
instead of the wolf-dog, useful only in the chase. There 
was a change in the popular habitations : the wigwam 
and lodge, the shelter of leaves and caves in the earth, 
gave way to the neatly furnished cottage and spacious 
mansions, as the abiding homes of culture and industry. 
A change in education : the war dance and the chase 
gave way to schools, colleges, and universities. A change 
in religion : where the Indian woman stood in dread of 
the medicine man and the prophet of the tribe, and held 
her child as the oflspring of fate, and worshipped in the 
gloomy rites of the Great Spirit, the white woman bears 
her child to the temple of the living God, and lays him 
a sacrifice upon the altar of Christ in baptism. There 
was a change in the immortality of hope : the Indian 
mother followed her dead to the burying grounds with 
a dim, dreamy hope of meeting on hunting grounds far 
beyond the setting sun, returning with grief and broken 
heart, sobbing in accents of sorrow that inquiry of Job, 
" If a man die, shall he live again ? " where now the 
Christian mother, with bosom swelling with consolation 
as she bears her child to the tomb, repeating to herself 
submissively, I cannot bring him back, he cannot come 
to me. I can go to him, "For if a man die he shall live 
again, for I am the Resurrection and the life." Barbar- 
ism has given way to civilization and the grim shadow 

24 



186 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, 

of idolatry has given way to Christianity, and so it will 
ever be. 

The discovery of the Continent of America by Chris- 
topher Columbus, was the beginning of a new era in the 
civilization of the world. Through the dim starlight of 
superstitition and idolatry the earlier ages of our race 
had groped their way to knowledge. Conflicting legends 
had left in doubt the form of the earth, the origin 
of man, questions of geology, questions of anthropology, 
questions of mythology, and questions of theology were 
unsettled. The light of the Gospel emitted but the twi- 
light of Christian truth, its glimmering rays shone 
through prisons, inquisitions and star chambers, after 
the purer lights had been closed out by creeds — theoc- 
racies and hiearchies. The close of the Revolutionary 
war secured by law the freedom of conscience, with the 
liberty of conscience ; free inquiry came as an effulgent 
light, science awoke from the slumber of ages, and like 
an agile army of travelers, penetrated every recess of the 
earth and the elements to discover new light. Freedom 
tore the fetters from the limbs of science, and in grate- 
ful return science has ma<2:nitied freedom in giving her 
new powers and grander era of action. The acquisition 
of Louisiana wao the declaration of the new doctrine of 
propagandism borrowed from the early Apostles of 
Christianity. The success of the Independence of the 
United States was followed by an awakening of Liberty 
in every part of the civilized world. The old monarch- 
ies of Europe combined to make wars abroad to prevent 
their people from inquiring into the wrongs, oppressions 
and robberies of the government at home. 

South America caught the contagion of liberty from 
North America, and organized under Bolivar for the in- 
dependence and freedom of the American Spaniards. 
Mexico, weary of being governed and robbed, then again 
robbed and governed by the Spaniards, arose from the 
nightmare of centuries and declared for the liberty of 
the Montezumas. Old Greece, the land of Homer, of 



1874.] THE LOUISIANA PUECHASE. 187 

Socrates and Xenophon, the grandest temple ever reared 
to knowledge, for the weary centuries of the Christian 
era had been pmouldering in the fires of her desolation, 
overrun by barbarians, until the monuments of her illus- 
trious children were mingled with the unhewn stones of 
her mountains ; her philosophy, literature and science, 
transmitted in sparks, were now flaming in the most 
gorgeous fires in every court in the civilized world. The 
children of Greece scarcely knew the names of their 
illustrious fathers, whose glory had canonized them in 
Pantheons, and whose philosophy and rhetoric made 
them masters of the world. But in this revival of the 
Spirit of Liberty, Greece awoke from the slumber of 
death, and declared for liberty. The spirit of her own 
Alcibiades, in response to the Metempsychosis of her 
own Pythagoras, reappeared in Lord Byron, who, with 
audacious sublimity, had rivaled Alcibiades in his con- 
tempt of morals, and had shamed Voltaire in his Icono- 
clasm, left his hereditary title in the oldest monarchy of 
Europe to lay down his life for the new republic of 
Greece. Scarcely had the spirit of Demosthenes awoke 
to drive away the maurauding host of another Philip, 
until his own voice was re-echoing in the republic of the 
New World from the godlike Webster, and responded 
to in the silvery tongue of Clay, demanding that the new 
republic of America should stretch out her helping hand 
to the old republic of Athens. 

Poland, inspired by the heroic example of Kosciusko, 
like a giant in chains, made one more terrible struggle 
to arise from her bondage. The South American States, 
like .Mexico, scarcely realized a pure and lofty liberty ; 
Greece was overpowered by numbers ; Poland has been 
crushed, but the seeds of liberty have been sown — time 
will harvest them. The steady, growing light of Chris- 
tian civilization, melting away the strength of arbitrary 
power, and at the same time moulding the minds of the 
oppressed to relieve themselves of oppression, will tri- 
umph, America will repay Europe. Europe gave to 



188 ANNALS OF IOWA. [jULY, 

mankind an outlet for its growth, grandeur and liberty. 
In return, America will transplant liberty to grow luxu- 
riantly in Europe. Liberty is tlie normal condition of 
man. This immutable law of a perfect government shall 
be asserted e%'erywhere : " That wliich cannot be con- 
trolled must be destroyed." Despotism cannot be eon- 
trolled and God will destroy it. 

Ireland, restive under the usurpation of the rights of 
her people, again and again has raised the banner of 
liberty and self-government, and the tyrants declare Ire- 
land incapable of self-government. Did she fail ? She 
did not. She w^as overpowered by the force of numbers, 
the combination of armies of hired assassins, and the 
overflowing treasury whose cofters were filled with 
money wrested from the toil of her own people. With 
what audacity must that champion of despotism speak 
against liberty, who says the land of heroes, philosophers, 
poets, painters, and statesmen, who have been alike dis- 
tinguished in arts and arms in every civilized country 
under heaven, cannot govern herself. If Ireland cannot, 
then can we ? And if we cannot govern ourselves, pray, 
who shall govern us ? Have we angels to govern us, or 
do kings govern the world so well that we can no longer 
govern ourselves ? 

It is not true that there has ever been a failure by an}' 
people of Europe or America to govern themselves. It 
is not true that any despotism gave to any people so good 
a government as they would have enjoyed by self-gov- 
ernment. In France the people have never had a trial 
of self-government. In all attempts at government by 
the people, they have been assailed by the surrounding 
governments of Europe, determined to preserve royalty 
aa the basis of government. The three scrofulous rem- 
nants of efl'ete families of tyrants — the Bourbons, the 
Orleanists, and Bonapartcs — have prevented even the 
semblance of a just free government ; the history is be- 
fore you. This is true of the Spanish governments in 
Europe and America. 



1874.] THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. 189 

In Europe republican government has never been in- 
augurated — republican government cannot conquer; 
between conquest and republican government there is an 
eternal conflict ; yet the republican sytem will ultimately 
prevail in every part of this continent. This is the just 
foundation of hope. One full century of extended and 
growing experience attests its success. 

Civilization, propelled by the knowledge of freedom 
and the freedom of knowledge, is the missionary angel 
flying through the midst of Heaven, preaching the ever- 
lasting gospel to the utmost parts of the earth. 

To Louisiana has been added Texas, to Texas Califor- 
nia, to California will be added the entire western part 
of Mexico, all ready, like rich ripe fruit, to fall into the 
lap of self-government. The question of the extension 
of self-government is limited only by the progress of 
supplanting the customs of an ignorant barbarious 
nation, with the materials for knowledge. 

The railroad and telegraph need only penetrate the 
heart of Mexico to bring her people into near neighbor- 
hood with republican government, to give courage, 
strength, and intelligence to her better classes — to make 
republican government in Mexico, as elsewhere, a tri- 
umph over despotism. 

Gentlemen, I have lived during the period of the dis- 
covery and application of those wonderful civilizing 
powers which have extended the possibilities of free gov- 
ernment among men. 

I am not old — yet I am older than the railroad and 
magnetic telegraph ; older than your state. I have seen 
but little, yet have I seen the triumph of the republican 
system in America — it will yet triumph in Europe. I 
have heard evil prophecies of the government, and each 
party and statesman is restive lest the government should 
die with him. The revolutionary soldiers from whose 
reverend lips the story of our first war fell upon my early 
mind are no more. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 495 406 3 

190 ANNALS OF IOWA. LJULY, 

I have seen statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, and pub- 
lic leaders swept down like leaves in a burning forest, 
yet the republic still lives, outliving them all. For more 
than half a hundred years I've seen yon sun rise over 
the mountain forests, pass through floating clouds, and 
bathe his golden plumage in the mists of the ocean. 

Each year rising upon lands more beautifully adorned, 
a people more thoroughly enlightened and more jealous 
of their liberty, science more carefully studied and more 
thoroughly understood, each year expanding the area of 
liberty and extending the lines of free thought. Cen- 
turies may he travel in his course, but he will never set 
upon the rights of man or outlive the government of 
God, which is pledged to justice, truth and liberty. 



AMELIA BLOOMER. 



BY JOHN H. KEATLEY. 



IT is a diificult task to attempt the biography of a lad}-, 
and much more so when that lady's life has furnished 
such an abundance of material as makes the duty of 
selecting more delicate and discriminating. The subject 
of this sketch has filled a prominent and useful place in 
public attairs for many years, and accomplished much in 
the revolution that has marked the pathway of the past 
two decades. 

Amelia Bloomer, with her husband, Hon. D. C. 
Bloomer, has been a resident of Council Blufts for many 
years, and during that time they have formed many 
pleasant and endearing attachments, ller maiden name 
was Amelia Jenks, and her birthplace Homer, in Court- 
landt county, in the State of New York. Her mother 



